Spiral

It was Waller again. He sounded panicked. “They tore apart Kitano’s cell. He had a phone. A goddamn cellphone-one of the guards admitted to smuggling it in for him. He’d been texting back and forth with someone. Lawrence, he knew. He knew everything that was coming. The demands, everything. But that’s not the worst. In one of the books he’d carved out a little space. Inside it they found a MicroCrawler. It was wrapped in a note. The note said, ‘The falcon strikes.’ ”

Dunne dropped the phone. The room pulsed a dark red. Dunne fought to keep control of his thoughts. The walls ran bloodred. Looking up, he saw a falcon pulling in its wings.

Dunne ran out of his office, trying to get away. He stared upward, seeing not the ceiling but a sky on fire, flames tearing holes in the world. From the center of the maelstrom came a Tokkō plane diving, orange flames shooting as it fell, melting and re-forming, as a falcon, as a burning sword. Yelling at the top of his lungs, Dunne heard nothing, screaming and running until the Navy guards grabbed him.

The next thing he knew he was on the floor, strong arms holding him down. The President, the cabinet, the Joint Chiefs, all stood over him. Men in their uniforms, the trappings of power. Bombs, missiles, satellites, all worthless, nothing. Today it ended. Kitano would end everything.

49

MAGGIE WAS RUNNING OUT OF TIME.

She strained against the cuffs on her wrists. Two feet away, on the little table, lay the pair of tweezers that Orchid had used the day before. They were a pitiful weapon, but if she could get her hands on them, it might just be enough.

The skin on her right wrist tore, rolled back. The blood was slick, acting as lubrication between flesh and metal. A few more minutes and she’d be there. If Orchid would stay away just a few minutes longer.

Maggie was very close.

If only Orchid would stay away.

THE LAST TWELVE HOURS HAD BEEN A TERRIFYING JOURNEY. A descent into madness, and then, incredibly, a return to sanity. Orchid had infected her with the Uzumaki, then left her overnight in complete darkness. For hour after interminable hour, Maggie had grown increasingly frantic, trapped inside the claustrophobic gas mask, trying to scream, trying to escape the corpses grabbing at her.

Hours later, Orchid had returned and switched on the lights, dispelling for the moment her ghostly attackers. Maggie had let loose with a string of curses like she’d never uttered. She’d howled, called Orchid a bitch and a whore, screeched all the ways she’d like to kill her. A demon possessed her that had little relation to the self that Maggie had known.

Orchid had opened her backpack on the bench, reached inside. Maggie had kept up the invective, only stopping when she saw what Orchid held in her palm. A glass vial filled with her grandfather’s glowing Fusarium fungus.

Orchid had taken some of the multicolored stringy fungus and mixed it together with a liquid in a test tube. With a hypodermic, she’d pulled the liquid up inside, then injected it into Maggie’s stomach.

Then Orchid had left.

Over the next few hours, Maggie’s shakes had continued, with mad visions of Crawlers tearing apart her son and corpses grabbing at her. But after a while, she’d noticed a change. The hallucinations were lessening.

The crazy itching, the homicidal fantasies. The corpses. All retreated further with every passing hour. Orchid would return for a moment, closely observing her movements. She would take Maggie’s temperature, as well as a blood sample, which she stored in a small refrigerator.

Maggie could tell that Orchid was pleased.

The glowing fungus.

“Your grandfather,” Orchid had said.

Maggie thought of the glowing fungus on the piece of wood: the prize that Liam had left at the end of the letterbox trail. That’s what they were meant to find. That’s what Liam had left for them. Her grandfather had created an antidote for the Uzumaki.

He had created an antidote for the most dangerous biological weapon ever developed. Because of it, she wouldn’t die here, unhinged and alone. The progress of the Uzumaki could be stopped. Because of her grandfather.

As that understanding took hold, Maggie was overcome with emotion. Profound awe, a tremendous respect and admiration for her grandfather, and a relief that soaked her entire body. He had succeeded in doing, all alone, what all the scientists at Detrick couldn’t accomplish.

But soon enough, Maggie’s relief dimmed. Slowly, a darker knowledge had taken root inside of her.

Orchid had the cure.

Connor’s law: you have the cure, you have a weapon.

MAGGIE PULLED AS HARD AS SHE COULD, IGNORING THE searing pain. One last, vicious yank and her hand popped free. She opened her fingers, the muscles obeying, though she could barely feel them.

A noise. The door opened at the top of the stairs.

She grabbed the tweezers off the table and quickly put her hand back down, as if her arm was still handcuffed.

She forced her breathing to slow, nice and easy.

One chance.